


Golden Sands

by Sodding_Malfoy (Leafyleaf)



Series: Star Trek Bingo 2020 [4]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Day At The Beach, F/M, Holodecks/Holosuites, Kidnapping, Minor Violence, Picnics, Pirates, Platonic Life Partners, Platonic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25984012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leafyleaf/pseuds/Sodding_Malfoy
Summary: Odo takes Lwaxana on what should have been a relaxing date on the holodeck. Why could nothing ever be easy?For the prompt of 'Kidnapping' in the 2020 Star Trek Bingo.
Relationships: Odo & Lwaxana Troi, Odo/Lwaxana Troi
Series: Star Trek Bingo 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885774
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8
Collections: Star Trek Bingo Summer 2020





	Golden Sands

Lwaxana reclined on the sand, sipping a synthetic champagne as she looked out to sea. Odo was cross legged, pondering the picnic that was laid between them, which he’d brought despite having no need or inclination to eat. Going to the holodeck together had been Lieutenant Dax’s idea, and Jake Sisko had provided the program from his own personal collection, heralding it as the place his most fruitful novel ideas had come together. Even Odo had to admit that it was nice.

Behind them, where beach met cliffside, was a cave. In the assumption that things would go well, he had requested the program to lay out two bedrolls in its mouth, where they could be sheltered from the elements and still gaze up at the stars. Nobody would bother them for at least the next 15 hours – he’d made sure of it; Quark had decided that his sworn nemesis had too much leverage on him to put up too much of a fuss. The thought made Odo smile. He just hoped that the man didn’t cause too much trouble over the next day or so for him to fix when he got back on duty.

“Oh, these are just the best grapes I’ve tasted in months! Won’t you try one?”

“I can’t, I –”

“Of course, how silly of me.” Lwaxana was looking at him with her deep, all-seeing black eyes, as though trying to see right into his mind – which of course, she was. “I do wish I knew what you were thinking about, when you go away like that.”

“I apologise. My company must be very quiet for you.”

She shrugged. “That’s perfectly alright, Odo. It’s nice to experience peace once in a while. And I know you would never lie to me.”

She said it in a very matter-of-a-fact way, free of arrogance, as though she knew it to be true. She was right, of course. There were no secrets between them. She was the one person he could trust absolutely.

“I was just thinking,” he admitted, “that I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“What do you mean? I’m not going anywhere.”

He sighed uncomfortably – he wasn’t very good at talking about feelings. “I know, but I’m really glad I met you. When I’m with you I feel even more at ease than I am on my own.”

“Aah, right,” she said with a smile. “I feel the same way. I never have to worry about how you think of me, because even though I can’t hear it, I know you. As long as they’re not smuggling ales, you don’t think badly of anyone.”

His head snapped up. “You’re not, are you?”

“Not what?”

“Smuggling!”

Lwaxana threw back her head and laughed. Odo was relieved and forced himself to laugh a little bit too, unconvincing even to his own ears. He would never have been able to turn her in.

Taking another sip of her drink, Lwaxana said: “I loved each one of my husbands.”

“Oh?” Odo blinked. He was quite confused by the subject change. Sometimes, having a conversation with Lwaxana was like trying to complete an impossible jigsaw.

“I loved them as much as I thought was possible. Well, except Jiyal. I have no idea why I ever agreed to marry him. Tavnian men really are insufferable.”

“Well in that case, I’m glad I could help you get away from him.”

“Oh yes, yes!” She nodded emphatically, then ate another grape. “That really was quite charming. What I mean to say, though, is that I loved the people I married. This includes you, Odo.”

Odo fumbled a little. “Oh, well, I…”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, darling. I know you never felt the same. I’m over it now too.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Regardless, I think we have a special bond. Don’t you?”

“Of all the humanoids I’ve met, you are by far my favourite. But I don’t want to get your hopes up. There’s only so much I can give.”

Lwaxana was no longer listening, instead holding up a hand to silence him as she looked down the beach. About half a mile across the sand, a ship had run aground. The boat was hulking and wooden. On the front was a masthead which looked like some kind of half woman, half fish creature made of vibrantly painted wood – it rang a bell somewhere in the back of Odo’s mind, as though it was something he had read about before. A few of the crew members rappelled down onto the beach, just slightly too far away for the pair to hear their voices. Two men started in their direction. 

She put down her drink and grabbed Odo’s hand, making sure that he was seeing the same as she was. “I think those people need help!"

“Those people aren’t real.” He rolled his eyes despite himself.

Lwaxana tutted at him. “I’ve been on more than enough holodecks to know that. And besides, I get no thoughts from them at all; if they _were_ real people, they’d be dull as anything. Oh, not an insult to you of course.”

“Naturally,” he conceded.

“I just think it could be fun to interact with the locals a bit more. Not that this dinner isn’t lovely, but you seem a bit at a loss here.”

Odo spluttered wordlessly.

The men came to a stop next to where the couple were sat, scowling down at them as though it were the constable, rather than the men themselves, that reeked of rotting fish. The one standing to the left was exceptionally lean and about a foot taller than the other, who was short but stocky, with arms as thick as his thighs. Both were wearing t-shirts with holes in them and linen pants that desperately needed patching up. The taller one had only one leg, his right one replaced with a wooden peg just below the knee. The other man, who was growling at them like a Klingon cave-rat, seemed to be missing an eye. He kicked sand over the picnic.

“Hey!” Peg-Leg shouted, cuffing One-Eye around the head with an audible crack. “Don’t go wastin’ food, or I’ll be taking bites outta _you_ next!”

Lwaxana looked at Odo imploringly. “Look at them, poor things. They must be starved. Do we have anything for them?

“We might’ve,” Odo grunted, “if the sandwiches weren’t so sandy.”

“Stop talking!” Peg-Leg yelled. 

Lwaxana blinked, taken aback. “There was no need for that, was there? I’m only trying to help.”

“Who do you think yer are, wench?”

“I am Lwaxana Troi, daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed. And you will show me some respect!"

Odo cleared his throat.

“Oh. What I mean,” she amended, “is that I’m some sort of princess, or the like.”

Peg-Leg and One-Eye looked at each other before both grabbing one of Lwaxana’s arms and pulling her to her feet. 

“Yer coming with us,” Peg-Leg said. His partner smiled, showing off his distinct lack of teeth.

Odo punched Peg-Leg in the nose with a wet crunch, sending a spray of blood out over the beach and across the hem of Lwaxana’s gown. Peg-Leg groaned weakly as he cupped his face, and One-Eye’s eyes darted between them in surprise. Lwaxana gasped when she saw the brown stain on her dress.

“Odo! This is made of… well, I don’t know what it’s made of, but it’s very hard to find! Anyway, apologise to the lovely gentleman, please. Computer, fix this sailor’s nose.”

He sighed. “Ambassador Troi…” There was a beep and an electrical woosh.

“Come on, I don’t wanna hurt yer,” said Peg-Leg in a weak, unconvincing manner, muffled under his hands as he inquisitively poked at his healed cartilage. “Just follow us, alright?”

Lwaxana clapped her hands. “Oh, can we? Come on, Odo, it’ll be fun. Perhaps they’ll have a mystery for you to solve and keep you busy.”

“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth, looking down angrily at the ruined picnic. As they began walking, he looked to Peg-Leg. “Sorry.” The word hacked from his mouth as though it was made of sandpaper.

“A mystery, did yer say? We’ve got plenty of mysteries. Heaps!”

“…Right.”

Peg-Leg nodded, then dropped to a stage-whisper. “Like my old buddy over there. Have yer seen his teef? Wasting away. All the other lads are like that too, but we’re not ‘aving sugars and things. Can’t make sense of it.” 

“Really? How interesting.” 

“I’ll take you to the Captain,” he said, not seeming to notice Odo’s insincerity. “And you can have a chat while we talk to your lady friend.”

The ship was bustling with activity, sailors yelling back and forth to each other and breaking into fistfights with little provocation. On the mast was a black flag depicting a skull and crossed bones, held up by a series of ropes that the men were trying to strangle each other with. Odo thought he would actually very much like to speak with this ‘Captain’ – he quite obviously wasn’t very good at his job and needed a firm talking-to. Despite this, though, he was more concerned with not letting Lwaxana out of his sight.

She was way too nice for these people, too trusting. Granted, they weren’t real, but simulated violence could be just as mentally scarring as the real thing. The safeties were on, of course, but he still dreaded to think of the damage a hologram could do. It always felt so real. It was hard to remember that it wasn’t.

Lwaxana shrugged off One-Eye’s hand, which had been clamped around her upper arm so tightly it could’ve torn her sleeve. 

“This way then. Um… Sir?” Peg-Leg urged Odo forwards, faltering just short of grabbing him and instead keeping a safe distance. Odo smiled to himself – he must remember how much his face had stung last time he’d got on the constable’s bad side.

He nodded his head and stepped forwards. “Lead the way. Ms Troi?”

“Go ahead without me, I think I’ll have a little look around. They haven’t made crafts as primitive as this one in centuries, it’s truly fascinating. Look at that, over there!” She pointed. “What do you reckon that’s made from? Porcelain?”

“Just holomatter. Photons.”

She rolled her eyes. “Odo, your idea of humour is completely preposterous sometimes. I’ll just have to ask one of these lovely boys on deck to talk me through things.”

“Lwaxana…” 

“Don’t you pull that face at me, Mister Security Man. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself for a few minutes. Do you know how often people try to assassinate members of the Fifth House?”

Odo knew nothing of the sort. He supposed that was a good thing.

Lwaxana smiled reassuringly. “Go and talk mysteries with the captain. I promise I will be absolutely fine.”

He wasn’t convinced but knew better than to push. Lwaxana always got her way – especially when he was involved. Seeing a smile on her face was just as dazzling as watching the sun rise on his home planet, or the first time he’d ever tasted chocolate as a solid. It was impossible to ever deny her anything.

Leaving her chatting away to One-Eye (who looked as though he had no intention or ability to chat back) Odo followed Peg-Leg to a wooden door towards the back of the top deck. The sailor knocked twice. After a few seconds, the door juddered open, rust flaking off from the metal hinges and raining down onto the floor. Odo tutted; he was glad they didn’t rely on iron quite so much in modern times, especially when it came to navigating the sea. It was as if people of the past had never thought things through very much at all. 

The room was very dimly lit, the only light source a flickering lantern mounted on the wall. When the door closed behind him, the captain’s shadow loomed fearsomely on the wall. Peg-Leg had deemed to stay outside.

“And just who are you?” The captain smiled nastily, his beard alive with writhing maggots and fleas. He was dressed very finely, in regal purples and reds, but every item of his clothing looked as though it had lived through its best days at least a decade before. He was trussed into a too-small waistcoat adorned with mismatching buttons and the fabric of his shirtsleeves were worn to nothing over his elbows. He looked like he was dressing up in the castoff garments of Garak’s promenade store, that not even a spy-not-spy could sell. 

Odo pursed his lips, feeling confident in his pristine orange uniform. He clasped his hands behind his back. He puffed out his chest. “Apparently, I’m the man you need to sort out all of your problems.”

~*~

When he escaped back into the sunlight, Lwaxana was gone.

The talk with Captain Bloodletter had been tedious and unrewarding, and trying to explain what scurvy was seemed an utterly futile effort – the man hadn’t even heard of oranges, never mind Vitamin C. Suggesting that a pirate captain was stupid wasn’t a good idea either, it seemed, proven by the pain in his face that would no doubt have blossomed into a black eye if not for the holodeck’s safety routines and his privileges as a shapeshifter.

Because that’s exactly what these men were: pirates. He’d been stupid to have not realised earlier, but he’d not ever seen an ancient Earth pirate before, and they’d never come up as particularly important to any of his cases. Nevertheless, he should’ve been able to tell it from their vernacular and violence if nothing else. Wherever and whenever they were from, pirates were pirates.

And now, after wasting his time on a hologram, Lwaxana was gone. He’d brought her here to relax, to have time together – with both of their duties to think of, they never had the chance to just talk. He’d spent a week just choosing which foods to put out in his spread, asking Nerys to remind him what they each tasted like and begging Commander Sisko to ask the ambassador’s favourite fruits on his behalf. Each and every element of the day had been agonised over, down to even the colour of the bedrolls (purple, Lwaxana’s favourite) and which constellations he would pick out in the night sky (Cassiopeia, the most beautiful queen, and Chamaeleon, as ever-changing as himself). But she’d wanted to go exploring instead – his plans had bored her. He had bored her. Perhaps he should’ve never thought himself good enough for her at all.

There was nobody left on the boat but One-Eye, who was sitting on a nearby crate and leering at him, saliva dripping down his chin. As soon as he’d been noticed he lurched to his feet, like a marionette jolted into life by it’s handler, and ran towards Odo, hand grabbing for his Bajoran communicator badge. Odo sighed. He wasn’t in the mood.

“Computer, pause program.”

The pirate froze in place with a hand outstretched towards Odo’s chest. There was a mad glint in his eye that Odo had seen in plenty of criminals before: the glint of someone so desperate to steal that they wouldn’t mind killing someone for it. He sidestepped One-Eye and jumped back down onto the sand. 

He had to find Lwaxana of course, that was a given. No matter how badly the date had gone, he couldn’t just leave without telling her. But where would she be? 

He was going to just give up and end the program when he noticed something laying in the sand, purple and expensive looking. Her shoe. She wouldn’t just go and leave her shoe, not Lwaxana. There were two sets of footprints in the sand, and a long drag mark trail between them. They’d taken her.

Clutching the shoe to his chest, he followed the tracks with all the authority of a constable on the case. But this wasn’t just a case – it was personal, and out here he had to answer to nobody. He could do whatever he wanted to the pirates when he found them. He could make them pay. They weren’t people, they had no feelings, and he wouldn’t have a reason to feel bad. Not if they’d hurt her. 

“…don’t know how to make him see it. It sounds silly, I know, that someone like me would be having troubles like this, but…

It was her. Relief flooded through his chest unlike anything he had ever felt before. She was safe. She sounded just like herself, blissfully unaware than anything was wrong.  
“I’ve already had love, I’ve lost love, I’ve had wild sex – and three children to show for it, I might add. I’m tired of it all now. I just want someone stable, someone I can trust and for once in my life actually rely on. But he doesn’t _see_ all that. I don’t have to read his mind to know he feels guilty. He doesn’t want to hold me back.”

The trees were beginning to thin, and Odo peered through into a clearing. Lwaxana was sitting with her back to him, leaning backwards on a tree with her hands tied behind her. One pirate was resting on a boulder next to her, head in his hands and eyes closed in sleep. The other was laying on the floor, fingers in his ears. 

“Lwaxana?” He called out, warily. “The program is paused. They can’t hear you.”

Her head whipped around as far as she could make it. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! Good lord, you’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll try to think a little bit louder in the future.” 

“So you should.” Her mouth lifted in a mirthful smile. “They hadn’t been listening to me anyway. They were just waiting for you to show up.”

He bent down to free her hands. “Why would they do that?”

“They’ve got it into their heads that we’ve got some sort of hidden riches. I tried to explain to them about how we’ve moved past the need for money in most civilised cultures, but they weren’t having it.”

“No?”

“Not at all.” She stood, dusting herself off. “Serves me right for saying I was a princess, I expect.”

Odo took her hands and looked into her eyes. “Nothing that they did to you was your fault. Nothing.”

She tilted her head to one side. “I’m okay. Really. They didn’t hurt me at all. That one sleeping over there even called me ‘ma’am.’ I think they were a bit too scared of your wrath.”

“For good reason,” Odo growled.

Lwaxana took her shoe from him and eased it on, walking back the way Odo had come from. When she didn’t hear any footfalls in pursuit, she turned inquisitively to Odo. “Are you not coming?”

“Coming where? We can just end the program from here.”

“End it? Why ever would we do that? You can remove the pirates if you would like, but I believe we have a picnic to get back to.”

Odo was slack-jawed. “The picnic? But you hated it!”

“What?” She laughed, her whole body shaking. “I didn’t hate it. It’s impossible to hate a single second spent with you, no matter what we’re doing.”

His brow furrowed. “But you said –”

“I just wanted you to enjoy yourself, Odo. You don’t have to always think of me, I’m happy to do things that _you_ enjoy. Watching me eat can’t be one of them.”

“I like watching you do anything.” He only realised after he’d said it how predatory it sounded, but Lwaxana’s cheeks were glowing with a deepening shade of red. 

She smiled. “Well, I see. Nobody else says these things to me Odo. If you’re not careful, I might get the wrong idea.”

“And what idea would that be?” Asked Odo, feeling brave.

“I always told Deanna that it was just a myth. How could it not be a myth, when I’ve been married four times and never felt it? But I feel it with you.” She reached up a hand to fix her hair, which was just as neat as it had been all morning. “I think you’re my soulmate, Odo.”

It all clicked into place in his head and in his heart, like a jigsaw that he’d just found the last piece for hidden away under the bed. When he was with Lwaxana, it was like there was nobody else in the world. “But… I can’t give you what you need. Children, romance…”

“I’ve had more of that than I can bear. What I need from you is whatever you want to give, Odo, be it your company or even just a place in your thoughts.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” he admitted, finally listening to what she’d been trying to say all along. “You’re my person, Lwaxana. Just you. You know that.”

She took his hands in hers and lifted them to her mouth. “I know.”


End file.
